The University College of London will be the likely host to a new $261 million neuroscience institute, according to a statement sent to The Scientist from the Wellcome Trust, a co-developer of the new center.

Beating out Oxford and Cambridge Universities, UCL will host the new center devoted to researching neural circuits and behavior, and could be completed as soon as 2011, Nature reported yesterday. Work at the institute will focus on model organisms such as mice, fruitflies and nematodes to explore how neural processing forms the basis for behavior.

The Wellcome Trust, a UK charity devoted to biomedical research, and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, founded by UK businessman and politician David Sainsbury to fund scientific research, are collaborating to develop the new institute, which will be called the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre. A final decision has not been made, but the charities hope to finalize plans for building the institute at UCL by the end of the year.